Table of Context

* Intro

* Why I wrote WotW

* My thoughts on Web Novels

* What is next

* Lesson I learned writing WotW

* What I liked

* Regrets

* What I would do differently

* Deleted ideas

* The End

Hello everyone, I cannot believe we are at this point but here we are. War of Two Worlds has finally come to an end. I started this project all the way back in March 2019 so it has been a long ride.

I want to start by saying, thank you all for reading my story, and going along on the journey. I understand it was a commitment as it was not a short read, 265 chapters + the 23 Shorts and I understand. I hope it was unique and interesting enough for you and I hope to see you in my next project. It has been a blast writing this book.

After over 4 years of almost nonstop writing, it feels weird to say that but here we are. It has been an amazing journey and thank you again.

I want to start by saying thank you to everyone who helped with brainstorming, editing, and other contributions. Thank you for your time and late-night conversations as we worked through this. And I want to say thank you to my Discord staff, you guys have been great

Why I wrote WotW:

It all started about nine months after watching Gate where I got stuck at home during a snowstorm and got bored. While I enjoyed Gate, I was very disappointed how it failed to live up to its premise. I kept having these ideas on what I would have done differently so I started it, only thinking that I would get a few chapters in and stop.

The idea of going to an alien world, fighting and exploring an fantasy and magical people. The idea of meeting these cultures, their social orders, and the relations between all these species. How do modern forces deal with all these factors? Etc. So many opportunities and all we got was a water down simp Harem story.

At the time I was working on a Story Bible for a different science fiction book, I knew I needed writing experience. As you can see, I am very creativity-imaginative (except for naming things) however, that didn't always translate onto paper. I had to gain writing experience, which became a good opportunity to do so, knowing I would go on to future projects. From there, I mostly ran on pure passion, figuring things out as I went.

Some thoughts on Web Novels:

These are very interesting and as I wrote WotW, I found some pros and cons to them that I think are important to keep in mind while writing a Web Novel. This isn't a statement if they're good or bad, better or worse than traditional books, more of to keep in mind as you write your book. This is new technology and will grow to be more important in the future. Just my opinions from my limited experience and everything I say I am guilty of it 🙂. I think a good way how to look at the differences is like, a traditional book is closer to a movie. You have a hard stopping point and you have to work around that while web novels are closer to TV seasons. Where you can spend more time on ideas.

Pros: With traditional books, you have about a 300 pages to cram everything you want into it. You have to be very efficient with your storytelling. This is good because, in theory, only the most important details are in it.

However, I would say this is what's great about Web Novels. There are no page limit so you can go far deeper into a subject, the lore of the world & characters. You can really go all out and put a lot of investment into what you want. If you have a story arc, you can add those extra details that you otherwise would have to delete or only reference. Maybe spend more time with characters, seeing a side that normally wouldn’t be able to because of priorities.

I know many times I was writing a character chapter, having the characters sit there and talk, about subjects, and what they believe in. Not really plot-important, just acting like normal humans would do. Just, having a moment. Same with battles, you can have a more play-by-play battle than just quickly explaining the events. In a traditional book, you might only be able to put 25-50% of these details because of page limitations.

You can also plan larger arcs. Traditionally, the story usually has to be self-contained, having a conclusion at the end. Because there isn't an "end" you have to meet. Basically, you can be more flexible.

Cons: Basically what I said above but the opposite. Because there isn't an urgency to wrap things up, it is easy to add unnecessary information. You can have a 5 chapter arc when it easily could have been 2 or 3 chapters, saving time and chapters. You don’t need to show the character waking up, going to the bathroom, eating, etc. Aka, every single detail of someone's life.

It does create an incentive to add more to a chapter that might not be needed. I know that happened to me as I became known for having long chapters. There were times a chapter could have been shorter but needed to add an extra scene or extend a scene otherwise, people would point that out.

It also creates an incentive not to be efficient with your ideas. I know for me, it did take a long time to get to the plotlines because I have all the time in the world to do other things. It also incentives to open up plots/arcs, even very small ones can be opened very easily.

That leads to my next point, the chapter-to-publish model. I am putting this as a con because, and this might be just me, is that once you publish a chapter, you really cannot go back. There were so many times after I published, new ideas came that I could have done that would have made it better, or, I realize a scene I wrote would have been better two chapters ahead or earlier. I think letting a chapter sit while working on other chapters is better because you can plan out better.

Those are just my thoughts, I may be biased as I move into my next project and how I am changing things. For WotW, chapter-to-publish was not the biggest deal in the world (as I tell people, we are not professionals, we are just doing this for fun XD).

What is next:

I will be released an announcement for my next project by the end of the month, 'Ad Astra (AA) - The Alagore War' (or AAA or the Canadian version, AA-A for fun XD) (formally known as Age of Destiny). But just a short mention here just in case people missed it. It will be a mix of fantasy and science-fiction elements

When I announced the end of WotW back in July 2021, I started working on a new original story. I am done with fanfictions - which I explained why in the AA doc. In short, I want to be free from being forced to use established lore and more importantly, there is no point adding more original content into a fanfiction. Legally speaking, I would never be able to do anything with my ideas and want to be creative. For example, I did so much with Pina compared to the OG, almost entirely different, however, I will never own her character, regardless of what I do with her.

AA will be a science fiction military/fantasy isekai, set in 2043 as I want to give it another shot with the experience I gained form WotW. What started as something to waste time and practice, I grew to like the premise and want to see where it can go. Modern meets fantasy does not have to be “Earth comes and slaughters primitives”, it can be far more and I want to show that.

It is not going to be a traditional isekai, where it is modern vs primitives. With this, I built the world, functions, technology, civilizations, etc all from the ground up. There will be many races, some fantasy you have seen before but newly created races for the story.

One of the big goals right off the bat was having Thaumaturgy (academic term for magic) based civilization making these Thaumaturgy civilizations be able to go head to head with our world so I've been designing everything from the ground up. In addition, I do want to keep the fantasy feeling/theme. How would a civilization evolve with magic being a major influence? What technology could they access faster or slower compared to us? Could they have less advanced technology in some areas and more advanced in others? If similar, what changes/twists would they be?

Stay tune for updates within my discord server, and if you are on a website that allows updates, there also. That is all for now.

Lesson I learned writing WotW:

Here are some things I learned while writing this book. I am making this more to help other authors improve, maybe not make some of the same mistakes I made, ideas, etc.

Having a Game Plan: When I started, I knew what I wanted to do and intended to rely on the Gate Wiki. As I moved forward, I realized how little lore Gate had (no joke, I would say 80-85% in WotW is completely original or an original take/additions on it. There is almost nothing outside of character names to go off of). The issue I ran into was, I had to figure out locations, and culture, everything, which I enjoyed doing. Having a game plan and sticking to it will prevent being derailed down the road as you started off with strong foundations.

Not assuming: There were many times I assumed the reader would understand what/where I am doing so I didn't have a character comment on it which led to confusion and problems down the road. My intentions were not to hold the reader's hand; however, I still needed to put the building blocks there for the reader, which I didn't, or have characters address something I wanted to add/do. You don't have to hold the reader's hand but you still need to put the details in there, especially if you want the reader to view something a certain way or justify a plot point/detail.

Not over-stretching: As you can tell, I am a very creative person. That's good and bad. One of the things I and other people liked was all the character POVs I had. You got a very good view of the world and their understanding. The issue became, all these POVs did not equal plot progression. There were times I could have 6-8 chapters covering all these POVs and progression never happened. That is okay here and there but when it happens that many times, it drags things down. While not every scene has to be progressing the plot, it has to progress something like the world, characters, moments, something. Not be random things that won’t lead to anything.

Do not add that cannot be committed to: This probably would be the hardest to fix as you can see $200 million TV/Movie budgets screw this up all the time but very important to bring up. Ideas are not equal. It is easy to come up with an idea that might be fun to do, it could be the best idea in the universe but it might not work within your story. Once you put something inside your story, it is almost impossible to take it out.

I do want to add, one thing that helped me a lot throughout the book was leaving small openings throughout the book to reference later. That is fine as you can set things up. However, be careful not to open too widely as to where it will leave a hole in the story. Have it be more of an option if you choose to follow up on it later. It is a hard balance to achieve.

Calendar: I learned that, even if you are doing side stories, a day at the beach, or covering a story that has nothing to do with the main plot, the calendar still moves along. For example, the Space Arc when Vanguard-7 went to that outpost with the telescope. That was very fun to do, had nothing to do with the plot, it was just fun. But it adds to the calendar. Spending a day at Italica or Valtris, it shows the worldbuilding but again, no plot progression and adds to the calendar. That was a balance that proved to be hard to manage. I want to show all these elements in the story but at the same time, it eats up the calendar. This proved to be a challenge that I am still figuring out.

An example for me was that I intended to include a Naval Arc within the war (will go into details below). I think I came up with an interesting and fun way to do it, however, it required me to extend the war longer than I wanted to, push off the Darlko/Demon side, etc. All to set the book up to include that new arc. It became too much, required too many compromises, etc.

It is okay to include new ideas, you need to make sure you're not compromising the heart of your story. You need to figure out how much effort an idea will take, and what other ideas you have pushed into the background. If an idea requires too much effort while not contributing to the story's progression, best not to include it.

Side note about merging technology-magic:

I got this question a lot and it sounded like many other authors got the same questions. I intended to bring in DARPA in volume 6 (I didn’t until volume 16 and only for one scene). The reason why it really never happened was that, and this is more of a Gate-like problem, is that there is no story incentive to do so. Basically, any nation on Earth is two thousand years more advanced than anyone in Gate so, as the author, why do I need to make that imbalance even bigger?

Someone asked me that question in Discord, asking why the US didn’t create Magictech to speed through the war. The example I gave was, and this is from the author's perspective, Gate is basically 1970s Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking a one-year-old baby over and over and over and over in the chest. Giving the US, JDSF, or any other nation the ability to have magical technology is like giving Arnold Schwarzenegger steel boots with spikes and still kicking that same baby. At that point, it just becomes a military-porn story (nothing wrong with that, it is cool watching artillery rain down on the enemy. But that gets boring after a while) and the trope gets old and only restricts what you can do storywise even more.

Unless the point of the story is just to brutally kill the people on Falmart as brutally as you can, it becomes a net negative to try and include magical technology in any meaningful way. Note, I am ignoring that it probably would take years for anything meaningful to be developed. Like an alien spaceship crash landing, it would take years just to figure out the basics. Especially when people want the war to be as quick as possible, any development wouldn’t matter until after the war so it is kind of a catch-22 no matter what.

At no point I am saying you cannot do this, these are the issues I ran into and it seems like other authors ran into the same problem. It really boils down to the Empire just being too weak so there is no need to explore this area and that's why you normally don’t see this as a major focus in the story.

What I liked:

My primary goals were character development, world-building, and the story. For my first go at this, I am overall pleased with what I accomplished. Of course, there are mistakes, things I would redo or re-prioritize or clarify more but I am happy.

Sharpe: I wouldn’t have gone so heavy-handed early on, I do think that was more of my personality being a direct person and cramming as much as I could in a few chapters. Outside of that, he grew as a leader and became a strong father figure for the ‘Girls’. I had lots of people DM me, talking about how the character helped with their deep depression. I also liked writing about him in all those fights, the Sharpe/Taylin ones are still my favorite (Legrath one is the top one).

Pina: She had the best arc throughout the story. Going from a naive spoiled brat to a respectable leader. I never like how she basically sold out the Empire in Gate, showing that she had no principles or values. And when she got power, I felt like it was never earned. The one change I would have done was give her and her Knights a bit more time doing their own thing but overall, I am happy.

The Girls: I did not want to do a harem so I went down the family route. I think I did an overall good job as everything between them all felt natural and they acted like a real family. I was happy with how everyone turned out, especially Rory and Lelei. Lelei gained confidence, going from a cold emotionless girl to a happy feminine one at the end, confident and happy with her life. Rory, more of a comedic, party girl but had deep demons that she had to heal from.

Krysist and the Elies Campaign: I had a blast with this character and arc. There were small battles I wanted to show but was forced to cut but overall, there little I would change outside details, orders, and flow here and there. Showing the two factions switch tactics and then adapt was fun. Having it get more gritty. And then there was Legrath, just loved it.

The Lore of Falmart and the Empire: Gate had almost no lore so almost everything you read was either my idea or an expansion of what was barely mentioned. The ancient civilizations and why Humans became so dominant, the 30 year war, history on why the Empire was created. Even with characters, mine creation or OG’s, their lore had far more depth and I enjoyed it as it just gave me something to write long term. Rory and Taylin created the Empire and their personal history for example.

The interactions: One of the things I enjoyed the most was the banter between characters. I think that is enough said. Everyone had fun pick on each other, telling stories and I think it flowed well. I am honestly surprised the bantering went as well as it did. I think that might be because I am a sarcastic, banter person myself so it translated well into the story.

The originality: I have always been the first to state there were problems with the story. Ideas and calendar getting ahead of the plot, getting side tracked on side stories, etc. Overall, I am happy with what I have done. It would have been easy to just have it where the US Artillery blows up another legion for the 20th time but decided to be more adaptive, figuring out the terrain and how that could be used. What cities and their politics would be. Adding what social and cultural challenges we would face. My intention was to focus on the characters and the world, using the war as a plot generation. While it did cause long term issues, it allowed me to have all these adventures with the characters. Go places I wouldn’t be able to go. Explore ideas I wouldn’t have been able to. While I would have organized things better a 2nd go, I am happy with the results as that was my main focus and that is why people read my story in the first place. The heart behind the story and the heart of the characters' relationships. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The relation of having modern soldiers working side by side with native forces, like Vanguard-7/Rose Knights and the US Marines/Elbe Knights invading Alguna. It was very hard to find ways to make them work together and I think I overall did a good job. It was challenging, forcing myself to think on how best to incorporate such tactics, but overall worked.

I also liked how I spent a lot of time in the arc. For example, the Battle of Legrath was about 10 chapters long, Rondel was almost 15 chapters long. With Webb novels, you can just add details and take your time flushing them out. I didn’t have to force myself to cramp 15 chapters worth of information into 5.

Smaller mentions:

I really like what I did with Rondel. Never understood why they were anti-Empire as they would be the most important city besides Sadera. It makes no logical sense why they would be pro-JSDF/US. I wish I spent more time stalling the fear of mages, showing how scary their abilities are and why they feared invading the city. The Rondel Arc flowed well, showing all these different POVs, their interests, and goals. Basically, very dynamic besides simping for one side or another.

My personal favorite chapter was 204, the Battle at the Outpost. In an isolated battle, I wanted to show the horrors of war. What every day soldiers are worried about, what they have to deal with, and face. What the League has to do to get an upper hand, etc. I think that chapter is a good example of what could be done in other battles, so it's not just bows and swords.

Regrets:

Overall, I have few regrets. I am happy with what I accomplished with my first go-ahead. But there were a few big mistakes that kind of screwed me over. I like to bring it up, so others could learn from that.

Not sticking to what I planned:

No real good way of saying it, I started listening to some people's ideas which caused me to backtrack on my plans. As my story got popular, I spent more time listening to others and less my gut. I was trying to be open-minded, listen to others' POVs, try to prevent tunnel vision, and hope people would see issues that I couldn't see.

There is nothing wrong with listening to others and taking ideas from them, however, I put myself in a situation where it caused me to basically drop what I wanted to do to appease others, which isn’t good. I ran into a situation where some people I trusted were either intentionally trying to sabotage me (and found out that happened to other authors), or others used my reputation as a shield to attack others behind my back, or to push an agenda. All this I was not prepared for.

On the other hand, I did meet great people, who helped me a lot. They did everything and more and have been a great value throughout every stage. I probably wouldn't have gotten to the finish line or gotten as well refined on my skills if it wasn't for them, so thank you. I would say, find people who can elevate your ideas/vision, not change it.

What I learned was that, if an idea is going to derail or require a major investment away from your overall goals, don’t do it. I allowed myself to get derailed at times, forcing me to change my plans or take on too much at once, which meant everything got dragged out and impossible to manage. If you get an idea that will enhance what you are already doing, or make slight course corrections, ask a buddy and go for it.

For Authors, the lesson is, be careful who you trust. Find those people you can trust and stick with them. If you find people on your team who are not on board with the main vision (I can go on a list but don't want to), just boot them. I know that sounds harsh but I had to learn to treat this like a business. Your name I'd on it at the end of the day and you bear full responsibility for everything on it. I have seen other authors with teams and the same thing happen. Trust but verify.

The Naval Arc:

After the Elies Campaign, I was going to start a new campaign within the Dumans Mountain Range, exploring the Dwarf underworld. As you can see that really didn’t happen and there was no Naval Arc. I will post the Naval Arc below, but this needs its own section.

Around Chapter 130, I started including hints of a Naval Arc with the intention of opening another Sea Gate to allow a fleet in. This required me to basically pause the war and delay everything. That was after Legreth why everyone kind of, paused for a while. That prevented me from going forward with my Duman Mountain Campaign until it got too silly to go all in on it. Because I needed to set up the Sea side of the story, I had to pause other arcs until I could justify investing in that side of the story. It became too much and was forced to drop it.

Earth Mages:

To be clear, I don’t fully regret including them in the story as there is a place for the concept. It was more, I ran into the problem as I already had so much going on and this just added another layer that I never could commit to.

The goal behind the idea was that we think we are very smart because we have a cell phone (yes Europe, they are called cell phones. Not mobile XD) so we can look up everything, so there is no mystery in life and no need to learn more. The truth is, we only know a fraction of our past as most of it is lost through time. There is so much we don’t know and we take for granted. We have all these folklores and methodically. Recently, we found out humanity is hundreds of thousands of years older than we first expected and human civilization could be 10-12 thousand years old (was thought to be 7 thousand). Even the James Webb Telescope is changing how we see things in the universe.

I will say, the execution was very bad.

Zorzal:

I know I am in the minority on this but I never understood the hatred of Zorzal. I know he is bad, he is a bad guy and done bad things but I have seen far worse bad guys in other media so I never understood the hate. When you read the manga, you can see that he is quite bright, working in a bad situation as he tried to lead his nation and there is a lot you can do with that, story & character wise. I think the reason why everyone thinks he is a joke is because a 90 pound girl beat up a 200 pound man with muscles with such ease, demasculinized him without effort. We can debate how realistic that is but that really is not the point, it is about Optics. No one could ever respect a man/character after a situation like that, it is just reality.

I would make Zorzal into a more respected badguy by starting off with not having this happen. I wouldn’t get rid of the evil stuff, like what he did with Tyuule and Noriko as that was just common in those days. I just wouldn’t make him be a manchild. I would also have him being more involved in command from the Capital besides appearing and disappearing depending on the plot.

What would I do differently:

Looking back, if I was to re-write WotW What changes would I make in hindsight? As I wrote, I looked back and wished I focused on other areas, be more efficient in others, or completely redesign aspects of the world of Gate. There are many I won’t be adding as the list would be too long but here are some major ones I think people could consider.

Changing the Empire: Because WotW is a fanfiction, I would keep the Empire closer to a Classical-era but with major changes. It is an Empire with magic and fantasy elements so there is a lot you can do with it. We all know, the Empire was designed to be as physically weak as possible to make the JSDF look badass (which makes them look weak themselves). There are so many small things that could have been included if you're going to have primitives fight modern and be interesting.

* I would give the Empire some kind of personal communication device. They need to be able to communicate at a long distance.

* City-to-city teleportation/portal to major cities. One big problem is that it takes forever just for a message across the Empire. Deploying Armies are even longer so allowing an army to jump between cities would help keep the speed/flow of the story good. In addition, this would mean the Earth nation would have to focus on and conquer these cities. There was more urgency and forced into a more interesting military engagement. I would need to think about this more and the logistics of it, my point is that there needs to be something to help speed things along.

* Include magic more. In Gate, even though there is an entire city with tens thousands of mages, Lelei is the only mage in all of Falmart. While I gave the Empire mages, looking back I would have gone much further and integrated more. I always looked at them as a heavy support. Being a walking artillery and protection for others. It would make the squad-level POV very interesting.

* As I said above, Gate had almost no magic in it of note. There is so much you can do with magical armor and weapons. I attempted to do this but needed more thought behind the ideas. As people correctly pointed out we have bulletproof underwear. If we can create something like that then a magical/fantasy civilization with enchantment and alchemy could easily develop bulletproof armor, stopping a round or two, just like ours (no armor is like in the Mandalorian). I would say, because it's a Classical-era this might be limited for officers and elite warriors but common enough to be seen in the story, just not for every swordsman but that's up to the author as it is subjective.

* I would have focused more on the Imperial Senate and its diversity. The Empire is supposed to be an “Empire”, it should show more of it. They have all these species within their ranks and "Jewel Cities" (Like Rondel). Looking back, it would have been cool to see these other cities represented in the Senate and show their POV, why they acted the way they did, etc. I think this is more toward Rondel

* I probably would give them cannons but not just a copy/past design but find some way to make it feel like something they would create. Much magical ammo or something. Enchantment adds a twist that could allow interesting deployment

* I would move Sadera 500-1,000 miles east or move Alnus into the Elies Region. They are just way too close to allow an expansive story on Falmart. If it was not for the Dumas Mountains being like the Rocky Mountains, there really wouldn't be a point in writing the story as the war would be so short it would end by chapter 5. They need to be further away to properly flesh out this world.

* I would reduce battle sizes, going to battalion-Brigade vs a Legion. While that is what I was doing, I sent mixed singles throughout the story. Small-level combat probably bets for this type of story, for both sizes. Like the opening battle for Alnus, JDSF kills a hundred thousand Imperials. Kind of dumb when you think of it (and that battle should have been more intense because, you know. Magic!). Should be far fewer as that high number being wiped out easily makes the Empire a cartoon faction.

I Would have spent a little more time in the beginning, going to villages, and having small-scale US forces fight small Imperial forces. Not everything needed to be this mega clash. The goal, show a more culture shock of both worlds, and slowly introduce concepts - like that early Tower battle before Elbe showed up & Volume 3 fort battle. You easily show how some towns opposed the US while others might like them. Show a bit of tribute politics.

This one might not be popular but I do regret including Tuka and Yao, Tuka less so because I did figure something for her. The only reason I included them was because readers wanted them. In my opinion, Yao brings nothing to the table and I hated the Tuka dad complex in the Gate and didn't want to do it. I am glad I included Tuka in the end and maybe with hindsight I could implement it better but with both of them, they were just there and I had nothing I wanted to do with them. The main reason was that they replaced Selina by forcing her into the background until she was a “side/dead character”. Tuka needed a complete redesign from her OG status and Yao is just a 5th wheel and has the same abilities as Tuka.

And that brings me to Selina. I didn't accomplish any of my goals with her and I can see why. Selina was my replacement for Tuka and Yao but when I brought them in, I ended up never having enough screen time for Sharpe/Selina's relationship. One of the big mistakes I found was that I didn't give her enough agency within the story so when it was time to move the story or main characters along, she had to be pushed aside because nothing about her moved the story along. That was a mistake I took to heart, if you have a character that you want to have, make sure they have agency, otherwise, in the long run, you will be forced to abandon/reduce that character.

I wouldn't have added satellites B52's or other major technologies on that scale. One interesting side of this kind of isekai is that you do go to an alien world and that brings in itself its own set of problems for any nation that goes there. Anything GPS/Star maps (INS works but are very limited at range because of Dead Reckoning) would be worthless and would take a while to include. It is the charm of having a modern military forced to go into a more limited/primitive form because they wouldn't rely on their full force (which was designed to work on Earth). Having the characters work on this reality twist that they never were trained for could be very fun and interesting. Because radio communications would be limited, they needed to establish stations to allow long-range communications. This would mean they have to defend them so the Empire could attack, creating urgency to defend them. It is this low-scale fighting (I don't want to say low-tech as you can still bring in high-tech stuff, there is just more limited. These are the natural limitations and weaknesses of our technology. Still far superior then the Empire but it makes sense and places a little more danger for the modern nation.

I would keep Noriko having a child as there is so much you can do with that. Just like Selina, she kept getting pushed into the background to the point any opportunities I could have done with her already passed. Like, Zorzal never cared that he had a son. My intent was to make that into a more pressure issue with him but kept getting pushed to the side for more important things. By the time I could have, it kind of was pointless as so much time had passed.

I would bring Sofia Everett into the story sooner. She was meant to be a response to comments that Vanguard-7/the US was too “good”, which I agreed with. She was supposed to represent how people would feel after being attacked and losing everything. However, she came in too late, and by that point, she didn’t fit well with Vanguard-7 as they were already too established for that twist. She was too far removed from the opening events.

With the Newscast, I enjoyed the idea but struggled to figure out what to do with them. They became random statements. What I like about them is that it helps to give information about the world that wouldn’t fit in the chapter. I think this was because of the nature of how I wrote the book, write one chapter and then publish it. That made it hard to plan long term (traditionally, an author writes an entire book and then releases, so they can plan things out better). I would do Newscasts again but this time, come up with story arcs for them, be more thoughtful and plan ahead in advance besides trying to make them up as I go.

Shorts is another thing I would do differently. They came about to help solve the multiple POVs in the story, and to show none important story elements. It was a great place for the Tales of the Clanless side series but outside that, the idea needed work. It became a dumping ground and forgettable as there wasn't any major storyline. I might have to do it again but would come up with its own storyline, like the Clanless, to show the areas I want to show.

Deleted Ideas

These are just ideas I had throughout the book. I am going to put them as I remember and in their raw forms. Not changing them now to look better or be more fleshed out.

Naval Arc:

This is a summary of my Naval Arc. Zufmuut was going to open a SeaGate in the Avion Sea. For the record, I moved the Avion Sea from the small patch of islands in the Blue Sea and moved east, into that giant open ocean between Falmart and that long southern island chain. This was to support a larger naval campaign.

The goal was that Zufmuut wanted to open a second Gate and have the Avion Pirates and Empires invade the Gulf of Mexico. This was just to piss off the American and other nations so they would invade. NATO Fleets would move through the Avion Sea and conduct an Island hopping campaign.

With two Gates open, this would put stress on the Gate system and trigger Apocryph (a dark matter mist that consumes/destroys everything). This would appear on Uros and on Earth, consuming everything in its sight. This would force both land and sea to strike Zufmuut temple to stop him from allowing this from happening as cities are destroyed on Earth. This would include Vanguard-7 getting the Holy Spear and killing Zufmuut, just like how WotW ended. With this defeat, all forces would move against Zorzal and his Falmart League fortress (that was deep within Falmart as Sadera would have fallen by now).

Dumass Campaign:

I was going to bring in the Dwarfs, hiding out in the Dumas Campaign. I was planning on these massive underground cities. The lion general that came out of retirement wanted revenge as NATO accidentally bombed his village, killing everyone (the Oprichinma planted fake targets there). This was supposed to be the sequel to the Elies Campaign that got dragged along because, at the same time, I tried to include the Naval Arc.

Because I tried to do two major campaigns at once, both failed and the Dumans Mountains only got a few scenes of soldiers going into the tunnels and protecting a highway toward Sadera.

The Southern Offensive:

I had a plan for the Oprichinma forces the southern Kingdom of Mudwan, League Principality, and Toumaren to launch a southern counter-offensive with the goal of destroying Elbe and the Kingdom of Alguna (who was occupied by US Marines and Elbe). This was to force the US to relocate troops from other theaters and onto the defensive or risk losing their number 1 ally.

This would be in coordination with Famulis' Dark Race army that would be shipped from the Blue Sea, flanking Elbe and NATO forces. This would have two POV plotlines. Vanguard-7 defended the capital of Elbe while Pina/Krysist would go to Toumaren (the major player) and convince them to side with her and not the Oprichinma. The Capital would be under siege and Pina, with reinforcements from the southern kingdoms would flank the Dark Army, winning the battle. I do not remember if I intended for the city to be destroyed or not, either option works.

The Spider Army:

This was my first cut contact and one of my 3 original arc ideas (I did two of them but this was dropped). I planned an army of giant spiders coming from (somewhere) and heading to Alnus. Zorzal made a deal with the Spider queen and they joined in the war.

At this point Pina was in Alnus but not yet trusted. This was also early as US forces still had not had that many forces in the country. Small units were deployed, including Vanguard teams to delay the Spiders as much as they could, causing many casualties. This worked as they were almost overrunned, however Quick Reaction Force from Earth could be deployed. The first line would fall, being forced to fall back to the main line. In combination with artillery and airstrikes, they were able to deflect the Spider horde back into the forests.

This would start a long campaign within the forests as they rooted out the spiders until Vanguard-7 found the Spider queen (humanoid with spider head). At some point Sharpe, Rory, and the queen would fight. Sharpe would cut Rory's hands off after she was defeated and use them to hold her weapon and defeat the Spider Queen. Besides killing the queen, he made a deal that they would go back to where they came or they would be nuked, which she agreed to.

The idea was that, at some point in the future, Sharpe would almost be killed in a battle and fall somewhere, lost from his team. Spiders found him and healed him, bringing him to the queen. In the meantime, Vanguard-7 would have found a shapeshifter version of Sharpe and brought him back to Alnus (this would be before Bunnies populated the town/base).

Selina would suddenly hate him because he felt different, realizing the same fatherly heart was not in it. With Sharpe, he would returned to Alnus and they discovered Shapeshifters.

Sharpe Corruption:

I planned on Palapon, the God of Revenge to corrupt Sharpe. This would transform him into a monster. Because Rory would be scared to hurt him, Krysist would face off against corrupt Sharpe as Frayen/Lelei would mindmeld into Sharpe mind. They would search his mind and purge the corruption while Krysist and Sharpe fought.

Nala:

My Cat was going to join the story as a Queen of the Nekos. It is a joke within my discord server. Nothing much more than that, but it would have been fun.

Edras Kingdom

Selina's home kingdom was thousands of miles away to the west. The goal was to go back there in a small operation. Vanguard-7 would overthrow the corrupt government and Selina would rally her people to resist. With this, they fight off the corrupt Nobles and Edras becomes an ally against Ticaret and the Empire. Selina would become queen but would stay with her father to represent her people.

Lelei Father

I intended to bring in Lelei's father at one point. He would come in, pretending to care about Lelei but intended to kidnap her for a reward.

A Plague:

I wanted to do a mini-arc when a plague hit Alnus. Vanguard-7 would be sent to find a plant that had a cure. During this, Sharpe would talk with his old Harper without realizing he was daydreaming. Apollo pretending to be Harper (this was before I finalized the rules that gods were stuck on their worlds) and guiling Sharpe to find his inner strength. When I was getting close to this arc, COVID hit in 2020 so I decided to cancel it, not wanting to panic people.

The End:

This is pretty much it. This has been fun and I hope to catch you all on the flip side.